Though The Day sought to dismiss the information in its Jan. 15 editorial, "Grounding Connecticut's flight of fancy," the facts support the conclusion that Gustave Whithead of Connecticut developed and flew the first motorized aircraft, not the Wright brothers.

In 2013, longstanding research about Whitehead's multiple flights during 1901-1903, preceding those of the Wrights, was rewarded with appropriate recognition by the publication "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" in its 100th anniversary edition. Jane's editor, Paul Jackson, determined that "The Wrights were right, but Whitehead was ahead."

This corrected the injustice that had Whitehead being essentially ignored by mainstream historians, in favor of the Wrights, due in large part to a contract Smithsonian signed in 1948 in order to acquire the Wright Flyer as an exhibit. The contract with Orville Wright's heirs still binds the Smithsonian and all its near-200 affiliates not to acknowledge any prior flights.

The evidence for Whitehead includes 81 years of interviews, with 18 eyewitnesses to flights before the Wrights, and numerous local newspaper articles that recorded his historic first flights in and around Fairfield County.

Members of the Connecticut legislature, including then state Rep. Larry Miller (Stratford, now deceased), researched Whitehead at the Fairfield Museum for three years before leading the charge to sponsor the bill to recognize Gustave Whitehead as the "first in flight" in the world on Powered Flight Day each year.

The General Assembly voted nearly unanimously to pass it, thus ending 50 years of stagnation as air-flight historians waited for the conflicted Smithsonian to take the first step. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy no doubt long considered the evidence before signing the legislation. That evidence includes the highly respected world aviation resource, "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" and the summary of the almost 80 years of research I sent to his office. The governor appropriately signed the bill into law on June 26, 2013.

The Smithsonian has demanded photo evidence of Whitehead's flights, though the vast majority of historical events it documents have never required photos. Authenticated Whitehead powered-flight photos, reported by journalists of his era, have not yet surfaced and appear to have been lost. Affidavits of witness testimony and local news accounts concerning Whitehead's multiple flights before the Wrights do exist, however, including at Connecticut's Fairfield Museum, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the Gustav Weisskopf Museum in Germany.

Accurate information concerning Gustave Whitehead is hard to find, considering the preeminent source, a book by longtime Whitehead researchers Maj. William J. O'Dwyer and Stella Randolph - "History by Contract" - is now out of print. Certainly, one will not find it on the conflicted Smithsonian websites, nor on those of their affiliates, as long as the contract with the Wright heirs is in effect.

At risk is revenue from tourism tied to the Wrights' status as "first in flight," in Ohio, North Carolina, and at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, where the "Wright Flyer" of December 1903 is a top exhibit. As an educator and graduate of the University of Connecticut and a close observer of and participant in Whitehead research since 1963, I can assure Connecticut residents that the legislature and governor's actions recognizing Gustave Whitehead as "first in powered flight" were not only correct, but long overdue.

Whitehead is the inventor of the airplane; his early flights were no fancy.

Susan O'Dwyer Brinchman is a retired educator, and author of a detailed manuscript "Gustave Whitehead: First in Flight" being prepared for publication later this year. Formerly of Fairfield, she resides in La Mesa, Calif. Contact her at gwfirstinflight@gmail.com. For more information visit http://gustavewhitehead.info.